The Hoover Week

Trunk lids slammed. Fishing and dam-building clothes were put away. The President led Mrs. Hoover and his retinue back to Washington announcing that regular weekends at his Virginia camp were at an end. Possibly he may take one or two hurried Sunday excursions to the camp in the next month or two, but it is his intention to join Congress in sitting on the Tariff. Last act of Mr. Hoover before leaving his camp was to invite Mr. Burraker to visit him. Last month freckled, tatter- demalion, 14-year-old Ray (William McKinley) Burraker tiptoed into the camp carrying a pet opossum to his President. As a special treat, the President introduced his benefactor to a tall curly-haired man. Ray was not impressed--he had never heard of Col. Charles Augustus Lindbergh. Last week Pa Burraker and President Hoover settled down in a couple of chairs under the trees. The President said that he "and his friends" would contribute $1,200 to build a schoolhouse where Ray, and 19 other children of five families living thereabouts, could be educated. The nearest schoolhouse now is 20 miles away.

P: Back in Washington one morning before breakfast the President greeted Secretary of State Stimson, Secretary of the Navy Adams, and six Admirals--all of whom sat down to eat, to talk about naval reductions. Next day the President sent a new note (contents secret) to England about cruisers.

P: Grocers calculated that the President was inefficient in buying White House food at retail instead of wholesale. Since March 4, they computed, the President and Mrs. Hoover have not passed a day without having guests at one or more meals. Some 1,400 guests ate at the White House in a little over six months, including 200 house guests and 250 week-end guests at the Virginia camp. Wholesale savings on butter, eggs, bread, tradesmen said, could have been considerable. But the U. S. Government has no cause to object. Food eaten by all except official guests is paid for out of the President's private pocket.

P: Guest at the White House all week was Hubert Work M. D., being eased out of the Chairmanship of the Republican National Committee. His visit was interpreted as a parting token of the President's esteem. That his resignation, announced as "due to ill health," left him under no misapprehension, he showed by saying:

"I expect to get rid of the Republican Committee in about ten minutes. Then I'm through. Since I'm on the toboggan it's not for me to talk--that will be up to the new Chairman." As for illness: "I am feeling fine. I've been sick only twice--once in 1885 and once in 1915. Since ten I haven't missed a meal. Every year two or three doctors examine me and find nothing wrong."

Next day, after the committee had elected as Chairman, Claudius Hart Huston of Tennessee, businessman-politician whom President Hoover had chosen to prepare the nation for his re-election in 1932, the Committee members trooped to the White House, expressed respect.

P: President & Mrs. Hoover attended the Quaker meeting house on Sunday, for the first time since they began going to their Virginia camp last summer.

P: Sunday night, on the eve of the meeting of the Republican National Committee President & Mrs. Hoover entertained potent Republican politicians: Colonel & Mrs. Rentfro Banton Creager of Texas (see p. 48), Louis Kroh Liggett of Massa- chusetts, Dr. Work, etc. etc.

P: The Official Spokesman, famed White House fiction, was one of the Coolidge institutions thrown overboard by President Hoover. Last week the Official Spokesman reappeared, but this time it was no fiction. When all the world was at war and Woodrow Wilson had a great deal to do, he used to send out his then good friend and trusted secretary, Joseph Patrick Tumulty, to tell correspondents whatever it was proper for them to know. Five times so far President Hoover has cancelled conferences with pressmen. Last week, distracted by Tariff, World Court, Arms Reduction and Republican National Committee, he sent his trusted secretary George Akerson to fill his appointment with the press. This Official Spokesman, strikingly Hooveresque in physical appearance, once a news-gatherer himself (Minneapolis Tribune), had nothing of world import to impart. He said that if Chief Justice William Howard Taft intended to resign, the President had not been so informed; and that if Governor Fred Warren Green of Michigan* (who had arrived that morning to spend a few days at the White House) were going to become Secretary of Labor when James John Davis retires on March 4, it was indeed news to the President.

P: Presently Mr. Hoover shook the hand of British Ambassador Sir Esme Howard and of Sir Robert Gilbert Vansittart, poet and Principal Private Secretary to James Ramsay MacDonald (and to Prime Minister Baldwin before him). Poet-Secretary Vansittart had just come to pay respects, anticipating his chief's proposed visit next month.

* Now serving his second term. Of his 60 odd pay checks received since taking office none has yet been cashed. At $5,000 a year they represent some $13,000. Governor Green's private wealth comes from a furniture factory.